Community custom faction balancing - Poll

[Green1]

Yessindeed.

I am aware of the lack of competence you had to deal with sometimes and having to fix things over the ages.

I think if Picard was stranded on Planet for ages, they would have at least moved out of the decay of the saucer section, lol!

Maybe something that looked like San Fransisco Starfleet Academy.

Still, not knocking you too hard. It IS a joke/fan faction.

[Buster's Uncle]

[ete]

I will say ANYTHING with the word "magic" in it automatically gets the boot. Get your fantasy RPG out of my sci-fi survivalist playground, thank you

Eventually I suppose we'll balance all the factions, but personally I also won't be voting for magic factions without some brilliant mechanics twist for some time.

And, anyone else got nominations? I'd like to get the poll up asap (tonight ideally) and pick a faction tomorrow for people to debate over the weekend.

[Green1]

The five we got are an excellent start.

One of the things we will have to edit straight out regardless of if a faction is okay as-is is the faction color. that way these things play nicely with each other and the 14 canon factions

Unfortunately, I am not sure the specifics of how to do that. However, I do know I am in the right place to learn

Also, ete, have you run into a problem with the number of custom factions SMAX lets you load? After a certain number, it is either not displaying or not loading and I can not select those. I have to continuously edit alphax and delete some to make room for others.

[ete]

One of the things we will have to edit straight out regardless of if a faction is okay as-is is the faction color. that way these things play nicely with each other and the 14 canon factions

Unfortunately, I am not sure the specifics of how to do that. However, I do know I am in the right place to learn

Only if two have the same color exactly, and even then.. there's so many we're not going to be able to avoid conflicts. I'd say leave almost all of them the same.

Also, ete, have you run into a problem with the number of custom factions SMAX lets you load? After a certain number, it is either not displaying or not loading and I can not select those. I have to continuously edit alphax and delete some to make room for others.

Yea, I deal with it by having this:

(click to show/hide)

;
; AARDOM
; acol
; adve
; AGRI
; ANARCHY
; androgyn
; ANTIMIND
; ARTISAN
; ATLANTS
; BARD
; bree
; synth
; huxley
; CAF
; CCF
; FEDERATION
; CHILD
; ISIS
; DREAM
; DROID
; EMPATH
; exile
; FREELCE
; guar
; hell
; IMP
; ISHBU
; JEODDRA
; GEBAZZU
; GEM
; GENX
; mcs
; JURIDIC
; SEEK
; cons
; neoborg
; PATH
; phs
; plat
; RANGERS
; barb
; SAINTS
; Show
; slayers
; STRA
; TERRAN
; unicon
; SYNDCT
; van
; entr
; Yeer
; YPUNAG
; ### broken, will crash on load ###
; COLLECTIVE
; TECH
; REPLCNT
; GENESIS
; ELITE
; DARK
; ACTIVE
; mech
; PEACERES
; MARAUDERS
; PERFECT

#CUSTOMFACTIONS
DREAM
bree
FREELCE
BARD
guar
unicon
JURIDIC
RANGERS

You can have 8 in #CUSTOMFACTIONS at a time, just copy from the big list the ones you want.

[Green1]

Add: for the first batch, I DO strongly recommend one Prog faction. We are in Alien Crossfire regardless of SMAX haters Plus, there are not that many of them!

Of the three (unless I am missing some - many of the faction are unloadable or have post Win XP ACEdit format errors) there are  the Bree, The Manifold Seekers, and the Antimind.

The Bree have history to them. They were featured in a forgotten early community mod then adapted and changed throughout thier existance. Now, thier gimmick is they are some kind of genetic experiment combining humans and worms with some prog underpinnings.

The Manifold Seekers

The base looks like crap. The original Usurper Bases would be okay. There is a bug with them in diplomacy were words spill over into choices. I would have to reproduce this and screenshot it. Thier catch is they are religous zealot fundy Progs who worship planet. But, the "ancient tome" concept does not fly. Progs would not have books or tomes but thier equivalent of old datalinks. Grey colr for faction is okay. AI does not play them too well, but the two times I played them was with 4 prog factions which REALLY hurts progs.

The Antimind.

I can not say how badass these guys are. the only things I would change would be some of the wording in the diplomacy texts. "Ecodaft" may describe Diedre, but does not describe this horrible monster. Keep this OP!

[ete]

There's quite a few other alien ones, off the top of my head.. mcs, GEBAZZU, and JEODDRA should be.

And, hm, I guess we could do them in batches. But probably max batchsize of three to avoid too much chaos? Still, doing a prog right away feels awkward to me, they.re not meant to be balanced the same way humans are. As you say, Antimind is designed to be waaaay overpowerd, making it balanced would kinda defeat the point. We could make a really toned down version for fair human use.. but it'd cut the heart out of the faction.

[Green1]

Prog factions are not designed to be used by humans. For the original two, there is a storyline.
But, it is a SP storyline thing.

I can just see it: "Earthmicheal! I challenge you, T_ras, Kirov, funbot and others to a duel! I select Antimind!"
I would be laughed at.



But.. more than 3.

The ones we just named are a start.

I agree nothing insane like 10.

If we go that route - over any objections or AC2 folks chiming in on something else - we have:



Freelancer
Dreams of Earth
Gaurdians of Morality
Showbiz (I vote for rename/ total rework. Let me have my fun!)

[ete]

hm... thinking more, it would be reasonable to make a version which is balanced for humans. there's nothing innately broken about progs. but that would require major changes. Even bringing antimind to Caretaker/Usurper level would require massive changes.

We want to do many, but I don't want to do loads at once. Let's figure this out and get plenty of input on each faction. Especially for the first one we're doing, it's important to not just get swept up in making changes individually. If these versions are to be accepted as valid, we've got to do them as a community, and right off the bat doing loads at once is not an easy thing for the community to join in with. One, maybe two, for the first round. We can add in more later, and later may be pretty shortly afterward (under a week perhaps), but I want to keep this vaguely co-ordinated and on track.

[Kilkakon]

If Antimind gets some tweaking, I made a few extra base names in my personal copy, if anybody wants me to throw those up.

Tech Triade is another Prog one.

I've always liked a few factions from the set, but I'm happy to update them myself... Well I sorta started, but then got busy... I can post what I did in another thread if people like. I've liked the Neveral Order (I weakened him slightly as he was a bit strong), the Children's Alliance (perhaps an experiement to see if plural leaders can be done properly in script.txt).

I was going to make a faction set with 7 factions in it, some from NN and some community ones, but once again, there's only so many hours in the day, haha.

[Green1]

I just thought of something scary. What if each antimind base functioned like a Fungal Tower popping off mindworms depending on how much fungus is around it. I know... six flavors of can not be done, but still.

Evil....evil...

Speaking of which while we wait to hopefully lure these lurkers to chime in (I was a LURKER too.. come to the light!), I am fixing to find 6 prog factions and put Morgan right in the middle of them since I have nothing but time to hang on forums and work on spreadsheets with ete.

I should be crushed easily.

I need a break from spreadsheets...lol.

[ete]

@Kilkakon: When the wiki's running we'll store copies of the text files on subpages. There'll have to be quite strict rules about editing factions outside o the balancing project to avoid too much forking, but adding basenames will be encouraged. Other tweaks should wait for community balancing, but feel free to nominate ones you'd like to see have some attention!

And weeeee spreadsheets. I've got a few sketches of formulas worked out, but need those SE values to move on really.

[Green1]

lol...  I will tag along to make sure the common man can get past all these regs too without needing a beer. Not to say beer is a bad thing or that spreadsheets are either.

You are stuck with me, ete.

I have a gift that turns spreadsheets into cohesive text.

But yeah, Kilk and Ete. Network Node suffered from lax standards.

It contributed to Buster's hidden inner nerd rage.

[ete]

It sounds worse than it'll be. I'm mostly trying to avoid it turning into a free-for-all, or a situation where one person just makes changes to the factions without any input from others :p. It's not just faction balancing, it's community faction balancing. Rather than it being a few people's edits to the NN factions done chaotically, it's carefully improved with everyone watching and having their say before we decide.

[Green1]

There's quite a few other alien ones, off the top of my head.. mcs, GEBAZZU, and JEODDRA should be.

While they are alien in flavor, JEODDRA and GEBAZZU are not pure prog factions. They have votes in the council and have human type bonus structures.

I did not think I was missing anything.

I had fired up what I was hoping would be a Morgan vs 6 Progenitor pain train. I was disappointed.